


You be the Moon (I'll be the Earth)

by Wildgoosery



Series: I'm With the Band [20]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Cuddling & Snuggling, Discipline, Dom/sub, Exhibitionism, Face Slapping, Flogging, Kissing, M/M, Masochism, Minor Injuries, Possessiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 03:26:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15597207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildgoosery/pseuds/Wildgoosery
Summary: Taako has things he wants Brad to do, and things he wants Kravitz to know.





	You be the Moon (I'll be the Earth)

Lup has a particular talent for calling Taako at the worst damn times -- while he's in the bathroom, while he's up to his elbows in pasta salad, while he's telling a very good very dirty joke about Merle and a potted fern. He's learned to keep his Stone on silent when he's actually having sex, because hearing his sister shout for his attention while his dick is inside someone else just isn't his ideal situation, generally speaking.

Today, he's on his knees under the kitchen table, scrubbing at a stubborn smear of something he's pretty sure used to be a raisin, when her voice erupts from the Stone on the counter. Thinned by magic and distance but loud and sudden enough to startle him. He bumps his head on the bottom of the table, swears, then rolls back onto his heels and gropes for the Stone while testing the sore spot on his skull with careful fingertips.

"Not a great time," he mutters as he flicks the spell open with his thumb. 

"It's Friday night," Lup says, incredulous. "This is the best possible time. Like what, you making a pie or something?"

"Chores," he says crisply. The range on these things isn't great, so rather than put the Stone back on the counter, he hangs it around his neck on its chain and reaches again for his rag. "Whatever, it's fine. How's things?"

"Hold up, _chores_?"

"Cleaning."

" _Why_?" she asks, as if he'd just told her he was pulling out his fingernails.

"It's not..." He bends around his project: the rag and the black plaster of raisin on the tile. "We're having company okay? And I don't..." He sighs and blows his hair out of his face. He's got it pulled back into a high ponytail, but it's slippery and fine and never stays where he puts it. "People clean for company! That's normal!"

"You're not people and you're not normal," Lup says, ruthless. "Is this some kind of sex thing? You guys fuckin' in weird dirty places?"

" _Christ_!"

"You get some dust bunnies in your pubes?"

"I'm hanging up."

"I'm just saying, you don't clean when I come over."

"You're family," Taako grumbles, "it's different."

"And who the hell do you let in that apartment who isn't family?"

"People, okay? You don't know all my shit! I have depths! I have _mysteries!_ "

She pauses just long enough to be ominous, and then asks in a stage whisper, "Oh my god, Koko, is it that guy?"

"No idea what you-"

"The orc guy from the party! Your ex! Uh....."

A tinny shadow of Barry chimes in from the background of wherever Lup is. "Bradson," Barry supplies.

"Yeah, Bradson! It's him, right?"

"Possibly."

"Finally caved, huh? I bet Krav talked you into it."

"Mmm," Taako hums, vague and noncommittal. And that might have worked on some of the other people in his life -- Magnus, who wouldn't have noticed, or Merle, who lets this kind of thing slide. 

Lup, however, zeroes in it immediately. "And I say 'finally,'" she goes on, "because surely my dear brother, my twin, my only living blood relative, surely _he_ would never have been seeing some dude on the sly without telling me every horny juicy detail."

What's especially got him pegged tonight is just how horny and juicy the details are. Not only cleaning the apartment out of some impulse he refuses to examine, not only planning to have sex with Brad Bradson at least once before dinner, but also... _also_...

There are things he wants, and badly. Things they used to do together, which Taako is desperate to do again. Which Brad is explicitly coming here today to give him.

"It's an evolving situation," Taako says.

Lup has launched into questions before he's even through that last syllable: "How long have you been fucking him? When'd you hook back up? Was Krav there? You're still seeing Krav, right, like _that_ you'd tell me, _right_?"

It's not that he'd wanted to hide this from her, exactly. More that it'd been real convenient for him that she didn't know, and thus couldn't ask these exact sorts of questions. "Listen," he mutters, "I don't have a calendar handy, okay? It's been like three weeks or something. It's not a big deal."

"You like this guy enough that you're voluntarily...." She pauses. "What exactly are you doing?"

"Uh." He considers lying, but now that he's under the spotlight of Lup's attention that's unlikely to fly. "Scrubbing the kitchen floor."

"Holy shit, when's the wedding?"

"Fuck off."

"I'm just saying, it's not just anyone who can get 'Taako from Teevee' down on his knees."

"A blow job crack? Seriously? That's where we're at, now?"

"We're all adults here, we all suck dick, it's fine," she says. And then asks, lower and a little more serious, "For real though, you okay? Like...you gotta admit, this is pretty out of character. I mean the stress cleaning, not the orc dick."

The floor defeated, Taako pushes himself up and stuffs the rag into the back pocket of his jeans -- a pair he stole from Magnus years ago, which only stay on when he's cinched the waist with a belt, the cuffs rolled into thick rings around his ankles. "Jeezy creezy, Lup, I'm fine," he says. "And I'd be fuckin' perfect if a certain coworker of yours had come home when he said he would, that slacker was supposed to pick up a couple bottles of wine."

"Oh yeah, there was some kind of..." He imagines the gesture she'll be making now, a vague wave of her hand. "Zombie cult emergency, I think? He called dibs, and honestly I don't need the cash right now so."

"What do you weirdos get paid in, anyway? Like what's the standard in ghost currency?"

"Gold and bragging rights."

Taako snorts. "Checks out," he says, just as the doorbell rings. 

"Ooooooooooooh is that him? Is that _Brad_? Put him on, let me-"

Taako slams the spell closed with a "Loveyoubye" and glances at the clock on the stove, which he normally pays attention to only in cases of baking or food delivery. It's seven to the minute, which means it's definitely Brad, because he's never been late to something in the whole time Taako's known him. 

Except for once when Taako accidentally-intentionally knocked everything off of his desk while they were fucking, and then refused to move until Brad physically picked him up and dumped him into the office chair, but that was a whole other thing. The memory of which has Taako's ears burning as he jogs across the living room.

There's a tall narrow mirror by the coat rack, and Taako pauses to look himself over. _Shit_. He shoves a hand back through loose strands of hair, well past artfully disheveled and in the territory of hot mess, his skin sweaty and caked with a fine layer of dust. He was supposed to have finished up in the kitchen a half hour ago, which would've been plenty of time to change into real clothes, and shower, and maybe-

The bell rings a second time. Taako blows out a breath, mutters "fuck it" and yanks open the door.

It's embarrassing, really, how his body reacts at once to the sight of Brad in the hallway -- the familiar squared-off bulk of him filling the door frame, tidy in his work clothes and the coat buttoned over them. Taako rocks forward a little, onto the balls of his feet. Drawn in and up, head tilted so their eyes can meet. 

"Hey," he says, the syllable soft and shy, which is even more embarrassing. He moves aside so Brad can step through. Brad has a small duffel slung over his shoulder, and Taako watches as he sets it down by the coat rack, next to the shoes which Taako lined up in a neat row earlier that afternoon. Because apparently that's what this whole situation has reduced him to.

Then the two of them stand and stare at each other as the door swings closed and the latch clicks. A frozen uncertain beat of shyness, which is a weird fucking headspace for Taako to be in. Teenagery, almost, his heartbeat fluttering.

There's a part of Taako that wants to laugh right now; to make some vaguely mean-spirited joke. Or maybe to drop to his knees to work Brad out of his pants and do exactly what Lup thinks this is all about. Anything to escape from the unfamiliar tenderness of seeing Brad's face in his home, anything to slide back into what he knows and understands. Back into what he's good at.

He reaches out to lay his hand on Brad's chest, flat on the delta between lapels, Brad's sternum warm and solid under his palm. "Punctual," he says, and Brad smiles. Not a smirk but something open; warm like his body.

"Always," Brad says, graveled and low. Taako feels the weight of a hand at his hip and then Brad is leaning down to kiss his mouth. A kiss that begins as a quick peck of greeting, but Taako's hand closes on the front of Brad's shirt, a fistful of cotton and hard horn buttons holding him near for a moment more. He tastes Brad's upper lip with his tongue, and the small sigh this wins him -- the fractional tightening of Brad's grip on his waist -- has him half-hard already inside of his jeans.

His damp, filthy, too-large jeans.

His ears burn even hotter as he pulls away. "Listen, I uh...I was gonna change-"

"It's good to see you," Brad says, and kisses him again. Both hands at his hips, now, thumbs brushing the bare skin just above his waistband. "Chores?"

"Uhhhhh......" Taako laughs against Brad's lips. "Yeah you, ah. You caught me."

"How was your day?" Brad asks quietly; another kiss, unhurried, fingertips moving along his skin. "How are you?"

"M'fine," Taako murmurs. A little self-conscious that he's canoodling in shit clothes just inside the door, that Brad hasn't even made it out of the hall, but hell. Fucking _hell_ , who _cares_. "Better now."

"Mm?"

"Mm," Taako agrees, and lifts a hand to cup Brad's jaw; bites a little at Brad's lip. And then, because he may as well be an idiot, adds, "The uptick in Bradson is nice." 

He's rewarded by a small startled laugh, and of all things that's what pins him, what really winds him up. And all he can do with that unnamed tightness in his ribs is kiss Brad again, shamelessly ardent; lift a second hand to Brad's face and push up onto his toes.

Brad strokes the hair back from Taako's brow, and pulls away to ask, "Where's Kravitz?"

Taako shrugs and lays his cheek against Brad's chest. There's a pleasant hint of sweat underneath the soap and aftershave. "Dunno," Taako murmurs. "Work."

"Hmm." Brad slides a hand over the small of Taako's back, up under his cropped tee shirt. The register of his voice has shifted downward when he says, "Did you think about those questions I asked you, pet?"

Taako swallows as a pulse of arousal sings through him. "Yeah."

"Good." He feels Brad kiss the top of his head. "Take a shower. Put on a robe. I'll wait for you out here."

"Not the....?" Taako's voice drops off, but he glances down the hall to the bedroom door.

"Out here," Brad says again. "And then we'll talk."

Normally Taako lingers under the hot water; tonight, he's barely in there long enough for the mirror to steam. He zaps himself dry with a quick spell, throws on a jade silk dressing gown -- the one that picks up the flecks of green in his eyes -- and pads into the living room, his hair falling in soft waves down his back and over the bow of his collarbones.

He stutters to a stop as he rounds the corner. In the time he was gone, the armchairs and side tables have all been shifted to stand against the walls of the room, leaving a rectangle of rug in the middle that's empty except for a single wooden chair, brought in from the kitchen. Brad is seated at one end of the couch, and watches Taako expectantly.

"Redecorating?" Taako asks, more flip than he feels.

Brad taps the cushion beside him. "Lie down with your head in my lap."

"You gonna braid my hair and tell me all the good gossip?"

"You're going to answer my questions," Brad says, with a plainspoken directness that belies what they both know those questions are about. And in this robe there's no hiding the effect it has; as Taako crosses the room, Brad's eyes track the stiffening swell of his cock under the silk.

It isn't until he's sat beside Brad that he notices the other addition to the room: what looks to be a large multi-tailed whip, a sort of bouquet of black leather thongs bound to a sturdy handle. Sitting innocently on the coffee table, which has been pushed up against the wall opposite the couch. 

The sight of it -- an object with no innocent alter ego, no reason to be here except to be used on him -- evokes an immediate, physical feeling that's somewhere between exhilaration and mortified panic.

"Lie down," Brad says, more firmly now. And Taako wrenches his gaze from matte black tails and does as he's told, shifting around to settle on his back. He flips his hair out of the way and rests his head on Brad's thigh, his hands folded over his stomach.

"Are you alright to do this now?" Brad asks.

"Yes," Taako says, maybe too quickly. Brad is looking down at him with an intensity that makes him feel itchy to sit up and spin around and shove his hands into that long brown ponytail, so Taako closes his eyes; steadies his breath. Says, "I want to."

"Good," Brad says. Then a hand is gently stroking Taako's hair, steady and soothing and achingly _known_. A specific comfort Taako has missed much more than he's let on, or even admitted to himself. 

"What kind of pain are you interested in?" Brad asks.

Taako barks out a nervous laugh. "The, uh. The sexy kind?"

Brad's hand moves along the curve of Taako's scalp, steady and solid, over and over. "Are there specific things that you want me to do?"

"I like surprises."

"I remember," Brad says, gentle and unyielding. "Answer the question."

Brad's hand moves over his hair, Brad's nails lightly scraping his scalp, and the feel of it raises gooseflesh along his arms. "I mean....listen, there's what I want and what..." Taako closes his eyes; inhales hard through his nose and blows it out again. "Some of it might not be doable anymore, I dunno."

"You don't have to know. We can figure out the specifics together." Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. "What are you hoping for?"

"I want..." Taako licks his lips. His breath has gone a little uneven. "God, all the obvious stuff, you already know this."

"Tell me."

The paths of Brad's fingernails tingle, electric. Anchoring. Taako's body feels dense and heavy, like clay; like he's been poured onto this couch and left to set. When he speaks, he feels a little like he's listening to someone else; another elf with his voice, another man's confession. 

"I like it when you pull my hair," he murmurs. "And when you bite me. Or scratch me. Or..." He licks his lips again. "Or when you hold me real tight. Like hard enough to bruise. I still..." He remembers his reflection in the bathroom mirror, back on the moon. Back before. Remembers his hand splayed to press into the purpling ovals left behind by larger fingers. Says, rasping, "That still sounds really good."

The pacing path of Brad's hand slowly drifts to one side. "What else?"

"I um..." Brad's fingertip grazes his ear, then, and he gasps at the contact. "I like it when you hit me in the face. Like...not all the time, but..." A shuddering exhale. "It's just, you know. Like the shock of it. Like it's that adrenaline you get in a real fight, only..." He can feel his cock tenting the cool silk of his robe; can feel Brad's nails running along the cartilage channels of his ear. "Only no one's actually gonna try and kill me, like I know it's fine. I know you're..." His skin prickles, a tingling wave up his back and his neck, along his bare forearms. He looks up at Brad, looking down at him. "It's different with you."

"It is," Brad agrees, and thumbs at Taako's earlobe; holds his gaze. "We can try, and see how it goes."

"Okay," Taako says. He closes his eyes. "Sure, that's...that'd be good." A papery laugh. "This is weird."

Brad's hand moves along his jaw; over the point of his chin. "It isn't," Brad says, his fingertips following a taut tendon line down Taako's throat; pausing over the flutter of his pulse.

"Fuck, I'm so turned on right now."

"I know," Brad says as his meander finds a sweep of collarbone. "Go on. Tell me what else you want."

"I keep thinking about that one time...like with the...with the belt..." Brad's nails drag gently along the neckline of the robe; catch for a moment where the fabric overlaps, then follow the hem down over his ribs, toward the knotted sash that holds it closed. Taako murmurs, "Listen, I know I let it go too far, but it was so good. So fucking good, like it was..." He sighs. "I felt like I was high. Like I was drunk."

"You were, in a way," Brad says. "That can happen."

"I don't think I can handle...I think that's maybe too much. But..." Brad's hand passes the cinched sash at Taako's waist and pauses just below, a warm pressure on his stomach. "Something like that," Taako mutters. "Maybe."

"There isn't space for 'maybe' here." Brad lays his palm over the slight curve of Taako's belly, close enough to the quivering heat of his cock that he can feel the sympathetic tug of fabric shifted by Brad's hand. "You saw the flogger I brought with me tonight," Brad says, heavy with promise.

"Is that what it's..?" Taako nearly opens his eyes, then, tempted to sneak a sideways look. But he doesn't need to. The image is thrillingly sharp in his mind. "God, okay, yeah. Yeah I sure fuckin' did."

"In my experience, it's easier to moderate intensity with a flogger than it is with only my hand," Brad continues, steady. "I thought it might help us to find where your limits are now."

 _Fuck._ "Oh."

Brad's hand lifts, drawing out a whine of protest that Taako can't quite swallow. "How does that sound to you?"

"I...Jesus, it's..." He feels the open front of the dressing gown part; feels cool air on his cock, exposed and straining. "Yes," he rasps. 

Brad's other hand pushes up into Taako's hair. "Yes what?"

"Yes I want that."

Brad's fingers brush along the underside of his cock, a teasing contact that makes his head buzz, that floods the darkness behind his eyelids with visions of Brad's naked body hanging over him, Brad's face close to his, Brad's hands parting his thighs, and he can't help bucking his hips up off the couch, starved and desperate. 

"Ask," Brad says, his touch ghost-light.

"Please," Taako gasps, "please, Brad, I want it. I want you to hit me until I beg you to stop, please."

"And you want me to do this here," Brad says, very slow. Very even. "You want me to flog you while your boyfriend watches us."

" _Yes._ "

The hand in Taako's hair clenches, tugging it at the roots. "Is that all?"

Pain on his scalp, feathery fingertips on his cock, and Taako losing his mind in between. "No," he gasps.

"What else do you want me to do?"

"Fuck me," Taako moans, all control abandoned; writhing in Brad's hands on the couch, turning his head to push his cheek into the heat of Brad's erection through trousers. "Fuck me in front of him, please."

The grip on Taako's hair loosens; the hand leaves his cock and settles instead on his thigh. "All right," Brad rumbles. "We'll wait for him to return from work. And then we'll show him."

*

Kravitz steps through a tear in the fabric between worlds and arrives at home to find his living room upended -- all the furniture shoved to the walls, a kitchen chair standing mysteriously in the center, and his two companions for the evening reclined on the couch. Taako wrapped in his green dressing gown and luxuriating in Brad's lap, eyes closed, while Brad strokes his hair. 

"Well, the two of you certainly got up to something," Kravitz says, breezy. 

"You're late," Brad says.

"Work," Kravitz says, then waves the word away. "I hope I didn't miss _all_ the fun."

Brad looks down at Taako and lays a hand on his brow. Asks, softly, "Are you ready?"

"Mmm." Taako elongates into a feline stretch, then pushes himself up and seated, his legs swinging around. He hesitates, Kravitz notes, and then leans in to kiss Brad's mouth before getting to his feet.

Kravitz's habit is to portal in beside the front door, to maintain some illusion of arriving the way a person should. He's still standing there on the front mat, bemused, as Taako pads toward him. "Babe, you're _really_ late," Taako murmurs once he's close enough.

Kravitz smiles and reaches out to hook a thumb over Taako's hip. "I surmised you could entertain each other." 

"We, ah..." Taako chuckles a little and ducks his head. Behind him, Brad leaves the couch to cross the room and stand in front of the windows. The curtains have been drawn, the gauzy fabric lit faintly from behind by street lamps. Taako says, "We kind of need you for this."

"And what's 'this'?"

"The thing we talked about," Taako mutters. "You know."

"Ah, you mean-"

"Hey, listen," Taako says, voice pitched for just the two of them. Glances back to where Brad is waiting then meets Kravitz's eyes again, his own wide and a little wild. "We don't have go through with it, okay?"

"I know," Kravitz says, patient.

"Like, you can pull the plug any time, any reason. Just say the word and he'll stop."

"I have had this explained to me," Kravitz says. "Repeatedly."

"Yeah, but-"

"You watched him order me around and then fuck me on our bed," Kravitz goes on, cheerful but unrelenting. "You explicitly instructed him to be certain it would hurt."

"I know! I _know_ , I just..." Taako's face is already flushed, and he worries the collar of the robe between his fingers. Anxious in a way he rarely is. Desperate for this and also obviously, visibly, unnerved. "This isn't the same thing."

"Oh, I realize. Now it's my turn at spectator."

"Krav, come on, I..." A shaky laugh. "You're not gonna look at me the same way."

Kravitz pulls him closer for a kiss. Not a peck of reassurance, but something slow and heated; hungry. "I love you," he murmurs.

"Babe, I love you, too, but-"

"I promise to tell you if I'm uncomfortable," Kravitz says, patient. "I promise this is what I want."

Taako huffs a small sigh. "Gotcha."

"What about you?" Kravitz asks, still quiet. He strokes the curve of Taako's jaw. "Is this this what you want?"

Taako's breath has begun to unravel. " _Yes._ "

"Good."

Taako pushes a hand back through his hair. Says, quietly, "All right," and turns around to pad barefoot to the center of the room. To stand behind the stark wooden chair. Facing the couch, where Kravitz now moves to sit, prim and attentive and watching Taako focus on the center of his chest, not quite meeting his eyes.

Watching Brad, too, that patient darkness against the curtains. No longer a figure in the margins of Taako's stories of the Bureau, skimmed over and talked around, but a presence in the room. A body in Kravitz's own memory, heat and weight and the smell of come. A sleep-heavy palm on Kravitz's shoulder in the small hours of morning. A baritone voice in a sunroom. 

Brad meets his eyes across the room; studies him, brow creased, until finding whatever was needed. Some unspoken sign of certainty, perhaps, which Kravitz feels he must be radiating in waves. 

Then Brad's full attention settles on Taako, whose hands are on the back of the chair, stilled by his grip on the wood. 

Brad says, toneless, "Take off your robe."

Taako's hands move instantly to the silk belt of the dressing gown, tugging it and then the gown itself open, revealing a column of copper skin. He shrugs the robe from his shoulders, holds it for an uncertain moment and then moves to hang it on the rack by the door, tucked between their coats. When he returns to his position at the chair, embarrassment is painted all down his chest, out to the tips of his ears.

On the couch, Kravitz licks his lips. Crosses and uncrosses his legs.

Brad steps forward until his chest is flush with Taako's back; curls an arm around to brush Taako's stomach with blunt fingertips. "How long has it been," he asks, "since you played this role for me?"

"I'm..." Taako's hands flex on the chair. "A long time."

"You've missed it," Brad says. 

"Yes."

Brad slides his hand down past where Kravitz can see it, down behind the back of the chair. Startles a sharp gasp from Taako. Murmurs, "You've missed what I can do to you."

"I..." Taako bites his lip and stares, scarlet, at the floor. "Kravitz-"

"I didn't ask about him." Brad tucks loose hair behind Taako's ear, then ducks in to kiss his neck. "Right now you're mine. Mine _only_ , do you understand?"

"...Yes."

"Good."

Taako jumps, a reflex not-quite-repressed, and when Brad steps away there's an angry red mark on the skin of his neck. Clear imprints of tusks and teeth. 

Kravitz is watching Taako's face as something shifts. Turns over. As the Taako to whom Kravitz is more accustomed elbows his way back to the surface. 

Taako reaches up to finger the blossoming bruise. Chuckles and murmurs, just under his breath, "You're real horny for it, huh?"

Brad's neutrality closes into a frown. "Bend over the back of the chair," he says. "Palms flat on the seat."

Taako does as he's told, but sullenly. Sarcastically, maybe, the whole movement somehow an eye roll. The seat is low, and so his head hangs down, hair falling around his face. He has to crane his neck to look back over his shoulder, to sneer at Brad a little and say, "How about you, big guy? You miss ordering me around? You-"

The blow comes out of nowhere. Taako is smirking from behind his hair and then the angle of his face is reversed, the sharp crack of Brad's hand on his jaw almost missed in that adrenaline moment. Kravitz watches as the red in Taako's cheek deepens. As blood wells in a cut on his lip. As he gulps air, panting from the pain and the position, this awkward folding in half that Brad has ordered, but also something else. Something that holds Kravitz down on the couch, that keeps any protests behind his teeth.

"Pet," Brad rumbles. "You've been out of my care for some time, so I'll make certain allowances. I'm not unreasonable. However." He reaches down and takes hold of Taako's jaw. Forces it up, so that Brad and Kravitz can both see his face. Can both see the blood on his mouth and the wildness around his eyes. "If I want to hear you speak, I will ask you a question."

"What're you gonna ask?" Taako's voice is distorted by the press of fingers and thumb. "You gonna make me beg for-"

This time, Kravitz knows the backhand is coming, but that anticipation almost makes it worse. Or better, right now he isn't sure which. He watches Brad's hand connect, precise and merciless. Watches Taako tongue an open wound on his lip.

Brad, so level and considering. Calculating. Dressed in a collared cotton shirt that's just too small for him; that pulls on his shoulders and across his chest, the cuffs rolled up his forearms. Trousers that sit low on his hips and hug the taut curve of his ass as he moves, as he prowls in slow circles around Taako and his chair. Animal grace and coiled, patient menace.

Brad trails one hand through the fall of Taako's hair; brushes fingertips along his brow, over his temple to the line of his ear. He wins a shuddering sigh as he traces a path to the tip. "I had thought we'd made some progress together regarding your sad lack of discipline," Brad rumbles. The circle continues and the hand pivots on Taako's hip, now. Green on coppery brown. "I must say I'm disappointed in this inexcusable backslide."

Taako manages to sneer through the waver in his voice. "Fuck off, Bradson, I don't work for-"

Another sharp crack. A line of blood and drool down Taako's chin. Brad smears it away with his thumb, too hard, and holds Taako's face as he leans down to meet his eyes. "You will keep a respectful tone," Brad says, "unless you want another. Do you understand?"

Taako swallows hard between breaths. "Yes."

"Good," Brad says, and straightens again as he continues his orbit. "You've built up quite the list of infractions in my absence." He runs his fingertips over Taako's shoulder blades, the breath-shifted lines of his ribs. "Did not appear for his standing appointment with HR. Invited unauthorized personnel onto restricted Bureau property. Failed to properly notify supervisors of new hazards as they appeared. Acted in direct opposition to the best interests of his employer, a clear breach of the non-compete clause in his contract. Failed to submit an after-action report upon completion of his final assignment. Did not provide ample notice before vacating his position. Did not schedule an exit interview." Still pacing in a steady circle. Always in contact, or very nearly. A hand on Taako's hair, his neck, an upper arm. "But you're correct," Brad says quietly. "You've left the Bureau. Your employee performance is no longer my concern." 

He pauses directly behind the chair, his hand splayed on the small of Taako's back. "Kravitz," he says, disinterested.

Kravitz swallows. "Yes?

"There's a flogger sitting on the coffee table," Brad says. 

Kravitz starts a little. He honestly hadn't noticed in all the topsy-turvy of their furniture. "There is indeed," he says, eyeing it. Caught between aroused curiosity and the impulse to laugh out loud.

Brad holds out an expectant hand. He doesn't look up from Taako's folded panting body as Kravitz obediently crosses the room, picks the thing up by its braided leather handle and hefts it, curious. Unsurprisingly, it weighs quite a lot. "Are you going to...hit him with this...?"

Brad does finally turn his head, then, and frowns at Kravitz around his tusks. "I am," he says. "Bring it to me."

Kravitz saunters toward him, all hips and attitude, swinging the tails of the flogger as he walks. "Anything else you need, sir?" he asks, playfully meek.

"You're here because he wants you to see this," Brad says as he takes the flogger from Kravitz. "I don't care what else you do with yourself as long as you do it quietly."

And then Brad looks away, his focus once again entirely on Taako, the flogger gripped loosely in one hand. 

"Of course, sir," Kravitz says, and this time there's no playful sarcasm. No coy winking joke of _Oh isn't this silly? Oh, aren't we ridiculous?_

He returns to his seat on the couch, his hands folded in his lap. He watches as Brad smooths a flat palm along Taako's skin, careful. At odds with Taako's panting discomfort; with Brad's own erection, plainly visible through his trousers. 

"I'm not here to settle your tally, pet," Brad says. "I haven't come to punish you." A pause. "I'm here to remind you of something."

Taako's ears twitch, swiveling back, before he catches himself and forces them into something more dignified. 

Brad lifts the flogger, then, to drag its trailing ends along Taako's ass. And Taako whines, a desperate sound half-swallowed that thrums in Kravitz's cock. Wholly unlike the Taako he knows, the Taako who presses him into their mattress; who croons in his ear, low and mischievous. 

This Taako is alien. Devastating. 

"If you lift your hands, this stops," Brad says. "You will tell me if we reach your limit, or we will never do this again." An evaluative silence, long enough to be uncomfortable. "You may indicate that you understand."

Taako chokes out a syllable that resembles a "yes." And that movement of his jaw is enough to shake loose a drop of blood. 

Kravitz watches it fall and spatter, wet red on old wood. 

*

Taako expected straightforward pain; a beating with a different tool but otherwise familiar. Measured brutality, clockwork precise, a steady searing staccato.

Cool tendrils of leather drag along his back, achingly slow. Taako moans a little as he arches up into it, but a firm hand rests on his hip; holds him in place. "Breathe," Brad says quietly. Another drag, from Taako's shoulders down along his spine, the tips just tickling the swell of his balls, exposed by his awkward angle. 

It begins with a flickering snap from below in a steady rhythm, one side of his ass and then the other. And when Taako chances a look over his shoulder he sees that Brad is whirling the whip in a smooth upward circle, loose-wristed and relaxed. He notices Taako's backward glance, but waits a few generous seconds before saying, "Eyes forward, pet." And because Taako's jaw is right at the far edge of pleasant soreness, he immediately does as he's told. 

He hangs his head low and stares, unseeing, at the rug. And he focuses on the sensation of the leather tails on his skin. Only barely painful and pleasantly stingy, and hitting the exact same places over and over again, raising a sympathetic warmth that he's sure must already be glowing red.

The rhythm breaks, and a broad hand smooths over the hot skin of his ass. Brad leans down, leans close, to murmur, "I'm going to hit you harder, now." And it's all Taako can do not to bark out a laugh. Not because any of this is funny, but out of a sort of manic joy that's bubbling up inside his stomach -- the shocked astonishing pleasure of being here, of doing this. Of having asked for this to be done to _him_.

Again, the circling flick and drag, the leather tips snapping sharper; closer to how it feels to be hit with Brad's hand but not quite, and so fast. So precisely spaced that even as Brad puts more force behind them, even as the sting begins to shift into something harsher, the pain doesn't startle him. It calms him, if anything. Metronome strikes that burn and soothe and expand to take up all the space in his brain; that push everything else away, everything but the chair he's bent around, the rug under his feet, the wood against his stomach and his palms, the throb of his erection, the two men who are here with him. Who are watching him and doing this to him, but even that feels distant, now. Everything feels distant but the flogger, the dull smacking sounds of impact, and the building crescendo under his skin. 

*

What had Kravitz been expecting, really? What had been the image in his mind when the two of them lay together in bed a few days previous, curled up in a pool of moonlight, and whispered about Brad, and pain, and Taako's hunger for both? Had he imagined Taako turned over Brad's knee, his bottom a cheerful red, relishing his "punishment" but nonetheless begging for it to end so he can be fucked like a good boy? Something playful and a little tawdry, maybe, straight out of an after-hours ballad. Big Bad Orc Ravages Helpless Elf, a familiar archetype enacted in their living room with Kravitz an eager audience.

Eager, yes. An audience, yes, thank all the gods for that, but not to some cartoonish game of Large and Small. Brad is a musician to the instrument of a prone body; an architect of tension that builds by inches, by countless flickers of leather on skin that measure out time, a great deal more time than Kravitz would have ever expected. A thoroughly engrossing monotony that affords him the chance to linger over details: to appreciate the craft of what Brad is doing. To appreciate Brad, his office clothes and his bare feet, his bare forearms and the practiced ease of how he moves, how he does this work of bringing Taako to a boil.

Taako, who is red to the tips of his ears. Who gasps and whines and shifts his weight but whose hands remain flat on the seat of the chair. Deep inside of a world which Brad has created, and which Kravitz -- in this moment -- is only just barely a part of. Which he can only sit and watch, a witness to something that started before him and continues, now, within his consent but outside of his control.

Brad pauses from time to time to run his hands along Taako's flanks, like a stable hand soothing a skittish horse. And after each intermission, he steps back into place and sets those leather tails whirling in their now-familiar patterns, incrementally harder but otherwise the same.

And then, instead, he leans down very close to Taako's ear; speaks words that Kravitz can't make out, and Taako nods in reply.

When Brad straightens, he sets his feet wider; something like a fencer's stance but more solid, rooted to the floor. His movements have the feel of choreography as he gathers the tails of the whip in his left palm, holds them loosely in the circle of finger and thumb, then raises both his arms with the leather taut between, his body a cocked trebuchet. 

The arm snaps downward; the tails connect, with a crack much louder and sharper than before. Taako's body jolts like it's been struck by lightning. He gasps a shapeless vowel, and hangs his head, and pants through the aftermath as Brad waits, observant, behind him.

Brad rests his fingertips on the place where the leather hit, his eyes on Taako's hands. And when they stay as they are — unambiguous permission — he raises his arms and the flogger again.

The blows are gracefully ruthless, the tails striking Taako in identical movements, over and over, forcing grunts of pain from his throat. Taako rocks forward with each impact, tendons straining in his arms and standing out from his hands. His face hidden behind his hair, his ears canted back.

Brad's face, tight-jawed and hardened. Brad's pupils enormous, his nostrils flared as he draws shallow, too-quick breaths. Kravitz is intoxicated by the intimacy of these small tells, these glimpses at what smolders under the shell of Brad's performance.

Too soon, the work is finished; the whip laid back on the coffee table. And then Brad returns to Taako's side to stroke his flanks, to squat down beside the chair and press his lips to new bruises. Careful. Watchful. 

Brad scrapes idle nails over reddened skin. "I told you that I came here to remind you of something," he murmurs as he kisses Taako's hip. "Do you know what that something is?" 

A single stiff nod, loose waves of hair swaying.

"Tell me."

"I like this," Taako whispers.

"You like what I can do to you."

"Yes."

Brad's fingers trace a looping path along Taako's back. "He's watching us."

Another nod.

"He's been hard this entire time," Brad says, and Kravitz almost laughs at how completely that skewers him. His erection now uncomfortably insistent inside his trousers, twitching eagerly at being discussed. His entire body erect, perched on the edge of a couch cushion. 

Brad straightens again, his hand never breaking contact with Taako. "No one else has seen this, have they?" he muses. "I've been greedy, keeping you all to myself. You make such a pretty picture." His gaze flicks upward. "Doesn't he?"

"Yes," Kravitz murmurs.

"He wants me to fuck him very badly," Brad says to Kravitz, conversational. Runs his hand down along Taako's spine, between his shoulder blades. "Have you done that for him, sweet thing?"

"Once or twice," Kravitz says, remembering Taako's legs around his waist. Taako's voice in his ear, breathless. Playful. Teasing, even as Kravitz ruts against him on their bed. 

Remembers, too, how it felt to have Brad inside of him. How he must have looked as he begged to be fucked, as he came with his hand around his own cock and Brad's teeth bruising his shoulder. How Taako is going to look if they continue with this, which Kravitz very badly wants to do. 

Kravitz bites at his lip, just so, aware of Brad's gaze. Says, "Will you show me how to fuck my boyfriend properly, sir?"

A smirk tugs at Brad's mouth as he reaches down to fist his hand in Taako's hair. And Taako gasps as his head is jerked back; as his face is angled sharply to where Kravitz can see it. Can see the split in his lip and the thin red line drawn down to his chin. The sheen of sweat on his forehead, damp curls laid along his temples. His open, panting mouth. His lust-dark eyes. The flaming skin of his cheeks, blood-darkened behind his freckles.

"Keep your head up, pet," Brad says. He loosens his grip on Taako's hair and gentles it down, affectionate. Runs a finger along an ear that jumps and trembles at his touch. Hums a spell as he curls a possessive hand around Taako's throat, a thumb pressed under Taako's jaw. 

Kravitz sits on the couch with his hands clasped over his knees, pinned by what he knows they both want of him. Does not touch the hard swell of his own cock, throbbing between his legs under a growing wet circle of fabric. Doesn't breathe nor blink, all artifice of life forgotten as he watches Taako's face.

He cannot see Brad's hand, but he knows the moment the first finger pushes in, marked by a gasp and a flutter of eyelashes, Taako's brows drawn together. Mouth open so wide that Kravitz can see the wet curve of his tongue. An expression Kravitz has seen, has caused, but not like this. Nothing like the wanton desperation that Brad draws out with his hands, with cruelly slow thrusts of his fingers. He holds Taako's hips in place with a bruising grip and coaxes whines of need, Taako glassy-eyed and slick-skinned as Brad unspools him. As Kravitz watches, his body canted forward.

"Are you close?" Brad croons, although he must know the answer. Must be able to feel that telltale clench around his fingers. "It's all right. You can come like this. Where he can see you."

A reedy hitch in Taako's breath; a broken-off fragment of "please."

Brad leans in; does something with his hand that makes Taako jump and whimper, palms shifting minutely on the seat of the chair. "You asked for this," Brad rumbles. "You wanted him to know."

Taako and Kravitz watching each other, their eyes a circuit. Brad's voice, low and dangerous, a current that sparks between them; a hot white static roar that builds with every moan, every twitch of reddened ears. Every rock of Taako's body against the back of the chair, pushed forward by the force of Brad's hand fucking into him.

"There's something _I_ want him to know," Brad murmurs, almost too softly for Kravitz to hear. "You were mine first."

Taako's fingers hook around the front of the seat, his every exhale a broken cry, precarious; right at the edge of tipping over.

"And you're still mine, aren't you?" Brad's lips brush the curve of Taako's ear. "My _pet_."

Taako mewls through gritted teeth as he comes. Kravitz watches it land on the seat of the chair, on the backs of Taako's hands, on the floor of their living room. Watches Brad squeeze Taako's hip, thumbnail digging in, holding him as he bucks and shudders.

Then Brad nips at Taako's earlobe and whispers what must be another question, as he immediately opens his mouth and chokes out a "Jesus hell _yes_."

Brad nuzzles at his cheek. "Yes what?"

"Yes, _please_."

"Mm." Brad straightens. Palms the curve of Taako's ass and hums a mundane but appreciative note. "Stay," he says, then takes a rolling step to the side, his hands coming up to the front of his shirt. 

All the empty blood in Kravitz's pretend body rushes to his cock as he realizes this new performance, this shift in choreography, is meant for him alone; that Brad has moved to allow him an uninterrupted view of hands sliding tidy cotton from muscled shoulders, peeling a thin undershirt up and over that squared jaw, tugging open the buckle of a belt. Brad is unhurried as he strips down to his trousers, the rest of his clothes neatly folded and placed in a stack on the coffee table next to the whip. His muscles flex as he moves, a delicious ripple under green skin and black hair.

He's stupidly gorgeous, and Kravitz aches to touch him. To finally do something -- _anything_ \-- more than watch.

Brad smirks at Kravitz as he thumbs open his fly, then bends to slide his trousers and underwear down. His erection bobs as he steps out of them, picks them up off the floor, and turns to add them to the tidy pile on the table. 

Kravitz salivates a little at the thick, solid heft of Brad's cock; at the memory of how it felt inside him; at the thought of it fucking into Taako, and the sounds that Taako will make when it does.

Taako, who chances a look over his shoulder as Brad prowls back toward the chair, toward him. Not really in the spirit of Brad's instruction but not technically a violation, either, and Brad grants him a low, rich chuckle. 

"So eager," Brad murmurs. Taako huffs out an impatient breath that thins into a whine as Brad presses up behind him. Rests his cock in the dip below Taako's tailbone and slides it along the cleft of his ass, broad hands kneading his hips. "You've been very good, kitten."

Taako's ears whip backward at that. He does not look at Kravitz. His head hangs down, his face behind his hair, his hands flexing against the wooden seat. And as Brad pulls away again, breaking contact, Taako moans in protest.

"Stand up," Brad says. "Arms at your sides."

Taako does so, a little unsteady. He stares at some point on the floor near Kravitz's feet as Brad circles around him, stops in front of the chair, and sits with the controlled grace of a man with thighs like marble.

He takes his cock in one hand, curled fingers loosely holding it in place. "I think you can puzzle out what do now, pet."

"I...." Taako swallows; licks the blood from his lips. "How-"

"Facing me," Brad says.

Brad's knees are set wide, and force Taako into graceless clambering. He offers no help at all as Taako straddles him, braces himself with hands on Brad's shoulders and lowers down onto his cock with a soft gasp of pleasure and relief. 

As soon as he's pushed past that first hitch of resistance, Brad shifts his hands to circle Taako's waist and pulls him down hard with a quiet grunt, fingertips dimpling his flanks. Taako moans as his arms slide around Brad's neck. He leans in to press his face into the hollow beneath Brad's jaw. 

The two of them begin to move, a clumsy eager rut at first that slowly shifts into something more deliberate. Practiced. Taako rolls his hips, leveraged by his feet on the floor, hunger and gravity driving him down with sharp slaps of skin-on-skin. Brad's hands cup the purpling curves of Taako's ass, the muscles of his arms standing out as he bears some measure of Taako's weight. Lifting and dropping Taako's body, his spell-slick cock seen in glimpses.

Kravitz watches, burning with want and statue still, as Brad's fingers dig in, his nails leaving red crescent marks. As Taako leans forward to kiss Brad's mouth, their faces hidden by his hair but the eager wet sound of it clear and crackling, broken by Taako moaning Brad's name and other things — "baby" and "please" and "missed you." And Brad's voice murmuring a litany in return, "you're so good, kitten, you're so good, you're mine, I'm here, I've got you."

Kravitz is abruptly aware of how little this has to do with him; that he's no longer a tool in Brad's arsenal, no longer a gaze to be weaponized. In this moment he's invisible in a way that's profoundly intimate, and strange, and perhaps a little unsettling. Not bad, precisely, nor unexpected, not after seeing how the two of them look at each other. But _strange_. Not at all where he thought this tryst with a mortal would go when he began it in a bedroom on the moon.

His chest tightens as he watches them; as Brad inevitably surrenders to the slow build of the night, tangles his fingers into the ruin of Taako's hair and groans against Taako's mouth. As he comes inside of Taako feet away from where Kravitz is sitting, Taako's lean brown body held close and Brad's face bowed to his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut and brows drawn together.

They stay that way as the aftershocks pass, both of them breathless and dripping with sweat. Taako drops his head to Brad's collar bone, Brad's cock still deep inside of him, and whispers something Kravitz can't hear. Whatever it is, it prompts a soft chuckle and a broad hand on his jaw, turning up his face again so Brad can kiss his forehead, his temple, his mouth.

Then Brad shifts his grip to Taako's thighs, and Taako swears through laughter as Brad stands with every appearance of effortlessness, his dick sliding free with a soft wet pop.

Kravitz leans back reflexively as Brad steps forward to tower over him. And Kravitz and Taako both yelp when Brad drops his boneless burden into Kravitz's lap.

"Use him however you like," Brad says, with a smug veneer that might have convinced someone who couldn't see his face.

"I thought you said you weren't gonna 'reward tardiness,'" Taako says, slurred and giddy and sprawled across Kravitz's thighs.

"Tardiness, no," Brad says. "Patience, yes." He bends to kiss each of their foreheads in turn, laughably chaste given everything, then sits down in an armchair that's been shoved against the wall a few feet away, between the coffee table and the kitchen door. 

"Why _thank you_ , sir," Kravitz says, sing-song, as his suit dissolves into wisps of black smoke.

Taako is an exhausted weight pinning Kravitz down, sticky and slippery with come and with sweat, a mess in the way that only mortals can be, which Kravitz of course adores. Both of them laugh at the awkwardness of Kravitz shimmying out from under him, the two of them a tangle of limbs and sharp elbows. Then Kravitz is crouching over Taako's abdomen, Taako's softening cock nestled in the palm of one hand, kissing his cheeks and the corners of his eyes. 

"You're a treasure," Kravitz says against his lips.

"'S true" Taako says, a warm puff of breath.

"I cannot believe," Kravitz murmurs between kisses, "that you went so long without telling me about any of this."

"Well _maybe_ ," Taako drawls, "I didn't realized a certain unnamed undead boyfriend was such an enormous fuckin' perv." 

"You're one to talk, love."

"Can't imagine what you could _possibly_ mean."

"I take it all back, you're a terror," Kravitz says, and lays his hands along the sides of Taako's face, and kisses him so deeply and so long that Taako gasps a little when they finally break apart. "You're frightful," Kravitz whispers. "A menace."

"True," Taako says, and giggles. "I'm getting orc come all over the couch."

"Unacceptable," Kravitz murmurs, "you should be getting it all over _me_."

Taako's hands slide between them to find Kravitz's cock. "You close, babe?"

Kravitz sighs a "yes" as he ruts against Taako's palm. 

"You wanna fuck me?" Taako nips at him, voice hot and loud with nearness. "You wanna fuck Brad's leftovers, that what rattles your bones my man?"

Kravitz moans. "Gods, obviously."

"You gonna even last that long?"

"Taako, _please._ "

"C'mere," Taako murmurs, and hooks his still-trembling legs around Kravitz's waist, pulls him in close. And they're kissing again as Kravitz's cock slides into him, an easy slick warmth that's immediately too much for him to stand, too _good_ , and he pushes his face into Taako's neck as he comes with a shuddering jerk of his hips.

He collapses onto Taako with a sigh. Nuzzles with lazy insistence at Taako's warm cheek until Taako laughs and turns his head for another kiss.

Eventually Taako shifts to look past Kravitz's shoulder. "You gonna just sit there gawking, big guy?"

"I didn't want to interrupt," Brad says, unseen, somehow affectionate despite the sarcasm.

Taako extends an arm and makes a vague grabbing motion with his hand. "Too far," he says, then giggles again. 

Brad smiles, then, and stands. He crosses back over to the couch, and Kravitz and Taako both pull up their legs to make room for him to sit. Brad is still blissfully naked, and Kravitz shifts around and up onto his knees, and lays a hand on Brad's sweaty chest, and licks a long stripe along his neck. This wins him a squawk of surprise, which he relishes along with the salt taste of Brad's skin. 

A few moments of shuffling on the cushions, and then the three of them are piled together, Brad sitting upright with Kravitz and Taako draped over him like house cats, all basking in the pleasure of an undignified heap.

*

Taako remembers having resisted this before; how he put on a show of resenting Brad's insistence on gentling him back to reality, which Brad scheduled along with everything else. A stretch of close quiet time together -- the exact length of which was at Brad's discretion -- was the ticket for entry into everything else. If Taako wanted rough sex and cruelty, he had to agree to being coddled later.

The resentment was an act, but the resistance? A part of him really had bristled at the mandatory intimacy -- had felt cornered, maybe, by how it made him feel.

Taako remembers all of that, but it seems riciulous, now. _Now_ he's curled up against Brad's side, held close in the circle of an enormous arm with Kravitz's fingers knit together with his own, the heels of their palms resting on Brad's stomach. Brad's hand tracing gently up and down his shoulder, his nose pressed into Taako's hair, his breath warm against Taako's scalp. It's absolutely perfect and frankly, Taako can't think of a single reason to move for the rest of the night. They'll just ooze into a horizontal pile here on the couch and fall asleep, and in the morning they'll be smelly with their limbs all pins and needles and nonetheless stupidly happy, he's sure. 

It can't have been more than a half hour when Brad begins to shift underneath him.

"M'not done," Taako whines, and tugs ineffectually at Brad's arm as he's rolled out of the way. He groans, theatrical, when Brad locates his underwear and pulls it back on.

Brad crouches down in front of his duffel and unzips it. "Do you mind if I put on a record?" he asks, and produces a stack of worn cardboard sleeves, the glossy printed covers peeling at their edges. 

"Please do," Kravitz says. He's lying half-under Taako, drawing lazy figure-eights on Taako's back. 

"You mentioned polyphonic madrigals the other day," Brad says. He crosses the room to the second-hand stereo which Kravitz dragged home some months before. "It reminded me of a band I followed when I was younger."

Kravitz pushes himself up onto his elbows to look past the tumble of Taako's hair. "Contemporary?"

"Still touring, if not as widely." Brad carefully extracts a record from its sleeve, checking it in the lamplight before he sets it into place. "The founding members are tiefling and drow, although a gnomish vocalist joined them a few years back. Lyrically, most of their work is in a dialect of Infernal, but on a few tracks there's a melismatic line under the melody which I can't quite figure out." Brad moves the playing arm and gently sets it down, which brings first a warm crackling and then a low drone of voices. "I wondered what you'd make of it."

Taako is still buzzing from the high of what they've done, but he's come down far enough to register this shift away from the old familiar routine. And to feel, humiliatingly, a pang of disappointment. 

Before, the two of them would sit together on the couch or in bed, and Brad would do the crossword or catch up on paperwork, or sometimes talk quietly about what they might do for dinner. Never anything about Taako, hardly ever a conversation, but even with all their stubborn opacity, Taako's place at the focus of that inattention had always, somehow, been clear. Brad's stack of expense reports didn't concern him, but all the same, Brad read them at that time and in that place -- with the papers awkwardly held in one hand as the other smoothed tangles of yellow hair -- _because_ of him. A fact he'd never really considered before but is intensely aware of tonight, as Brad settles back on their couch and begins to chat with Kravitz about shape note singing and the native tongues of the Underdark.

It's fine. He's fine. Brad's arm is around his shoulders, and when Kravitz is talking Brad sometimes turns his head to nuzzle at Taako's ear, or to kiss his forehead, and Taako knows these things are on purpose. He understands the message, although the fact that he needs that reassurance at all is embarrassing in a different way. 

They just had sex. They just had sex in front of Kravitz while deliberately excluding him from all the best parts, and let's be real, if anyone should feel kind of weird right now it's not _Taako_. It's the guy who just watched someone explicitly take ownership of his boyfriend. 

Taako can't follow most of what they're saying, so he turns his face against Brad's chest, and closes his eyes, and tries to focus on how nice it is to be sore and sticky and cared for. Tries _not_ to wish that he'd paid more attention at the Legato Conservatory, instead of dicking around with a book of cribbed gum wrapper wisdom.

Then Brad says something about counterpoint which Taako cannot parse but which makes Kravitz wheeze with laughter, and Taako pushes himself up and gets to his feet and mutters an excuse about having to pee, and shuffles off down the hallway before either of them can reply.

He does actually need to pee, but he lingers in the bathroom afterward. Hiding, which is stupid, but apparently that's him these days. A massive fucking idiot.

His Stone is where he'd left it before his shower, hanging on one of the towel hooks. It's glowing with unread messages, and he leans forward from his perch on the edge of the counter to take it down, then flicks the spell open.

From Kravitz, a "Running a bit behind, my love, I'll skip the wine for now and come straight home."

And from Lup, "hey 4real tho lmk what the deal is its weird yr letting a hookup mess w you like this bb"

It'd be easy to just sidestep talking to her about Brad. She doesn't live close by, she doesn't really know anyone at the Bureau outside her immediate circle, and she'll only push him so hard. It'd be simpler, too, not to have to explain.

He sighs and runs a hand down over his face. Then he types, "Not a hookup," and sends it before he can lose his nerve.

Her reply comes almost immediately: "k then what is it?"

Taako considers, tapping the stone with his fingers. He can hear Brad and Kravitz laughing in the other room. He types, "Serious."

It continues, rapid fire. "how serious?" "I dunno" "like ru dating?" "I guess" "he your bf?" "Krav's my boyfriend" "bb u seem weird" "YEAH WELL I FEEL WEIRD" 

"u okay?" she asks, and Taako hangs his head; rubs the back of his neck. He isn't used to feeling this way. He isn't used to worrying about this kind of thing. He's _Taako_. He's a _legend._ He's the center of attention in every room. He's the talk of every party. He's practically a _god._

He writes, "I'm fine I'll ttys" and closes up the spell, and puts the Stone back where it was, and looks at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. "You're _fine_ ," he says out loud.

Brad and Kravitz both turn to smile at him as he walks back into the living room, which weirdly is what reminds him he's still naked and also, still kind of crusty. He's wondering whether he should just turn himself back around and take another shower when Brad says, uncharacteristically shy, "I, ah...wanted to show you something."

"Oh yeah?" Taako's eyebrows arch and he wanders back to the couch. "What's up, big guy?" he asks as flops down on the cushions.

Brad produces a folded piece of paper. "Nothing important," he says. Taako's brows raise even higher, but he takes the paper and opens it.

It's a magazine clipping. A feature describing a restaurant in Goldcliff, with a crisp illustration of the proprietor at the top -- a halfling woman, Taako thinks, with hair pulled into a tight braided bun, holding a basket full of greens. Taako skims the first few lines then looks up at Brad, who's watching him with an odd sort of anxiousness.

"It's only about a quarter mile away," Brad says. "I ah. I'm not really up-to-date on the food culture here in the city, but this place sounded interesting. It reminded me of you. Well." He laughs a little. "You and the proprietor have similar ways of talking about your cooking. To my mind. As a layman."

Taako looks down at the clipping. "Oh," he says.

"If you like, maybe we could go there sometime," Brad says, and now there's no mistaking that he's nervous.

Taako refolds the paper and leans over to place it, careful, on a side table that's been squeezed in next to the couch. Then he crawls over to where Brad and Kraviz sit watching him, nestled together, and he lifts his hand to touch Brad's jaw. "Yeah," he says through a sudden tightness in his throat. "Yeah, that'd be nice." He leans in for a kiss, and feels Brad's hand settle on his hip. Gently possessive. Welcome.

The record is still playing. Taako has no idea what he's listening to, but decides he likes the sound of it -- a melody that rises and falls like the tide, some soft stringed instrument and a chorus of voices, shimmering and fluid. It brings to mind schools of silver fish, and sunlight filtered through water.

He should make dinner. He should put the furniture back. He should _absolutely_ take another shower.

He scoots in as close as he can; wraps his arms around them both.

"Tell me about the things," he murmurs.

Kravitz laughs. "Pardon?"

"The magicals...madrigals? Those."

"It's fairly dry material," Brad says.

"'S fine." Taako closes his eyes. "Tell me."

They do. And he listens. 

He can feel the hum of Brad's voice under his cheek. He can hear the smile in Kravitz's cheerful rounded vowels. His body aches from hard use. His lip stings where it split.

His chest feels like it's going to crack open; like his heart is too big and too full for it to hold.

"Serious." God.

Yeah, it sure fuckin' is.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you SO MUCH to Gulch and RQT, both for betaing this on very short notice and for cheerleading me along the way, I seriously cannot overstate how invaluable the two of them are and how much I appreciate their support and their enthusiasm. And additional thanks to RQT for her on-demand reassurance that this wasn't a disaster while I was still deep in the middle of it.
> 
> Title is from [Purity Ring's "Begin Again,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIPMzeNWAtk) which was a frighteningly apt suggestion from RQT.
> 
>  
> 
> [@Wildgoosery](https://twitter.com/wildgoosery)


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